by Angus Donald
‘You make it sound like a pilgrimage,’ I said.
‘And perhaps it is,’ said Robin.
‘So you leave tomorrow?’
‘Yes, I’m taking Little John with me, and twenty men as a body-guard — but the rest I’m leaving with you. Can you manage them? I gather there was some… difficulty at Milly.’
I frowned. The Locksley men’s hesitation in that escalade was still a sore memory.
‘I’ll manage,’ I said gruffly.
‘May I give you a piece of advice? Don’t try to get them to like you. Keep them busy. Ride them hard. If any man challenges your authority, flog him half to death. If he challenges you a second time — hang him.’
I nodded again, but did not meet his eye. I still felt a little weak-kneed at the thought of hanging a man out of hand, the way my poor father had been hanged.
‘You’ll be fine. There is one thing I am worried about…’ Robin trailed off and I looked up at him, meeting his silver eyes with a touch of anxiety.
‘I am worried that you might die…’ said my lord.
‘What?’
‘I’m concerned that, with a long truce declared, you might well die — of boredom.’
And we laughed.
We had laughed together at Robin’s jest and yet, as is so often the case with drolleries, there was some scrap of truth in it. Life is dull for a soldier in peacetime, and at times over the next few months I envied Robin and his questing in the southern lands. I took my lord’s advice about his men too, and rode them hard: patrols daily and regular arms training in the courtyard of the middle bailey, organized by Thomas. I even hanged a man — a thief who stole from his mates and whom nobody liked much anyway. I could not watch the execution, but I heard the man jeered into his grave by his fellow soldiers. I also kept the men busy at work on the surrounding lands.
As Constable of Chateau-Gaillard I was responsible for the manor of Andeli, which had once belonged to Archbishop Walter of Coutances. But the lands thereabouts had been much ravaged by the rough tides of war sweeping over them the past five years. And so I set my men to building bridges, occasionally borrowing a few skilled craftsmen from the walls of the castle itself — which was nearing completion — and to repairing barns and cottages that had been burned or ruined by the enemy, or in some cases by Mercadier’s foraging routiers. This work had several benefits: firstly it kept the soldiers busy and fit during that rain-swept autumn and winter, although we did stop work for a week in December when the land was blanketed by the first falls of snow; secondly our improvements increased the value of the manor, and so pleased King Richard. Lastly it made me feel more comfortable in myself, as I felt I was making some amends to the destruction that my fellow warriors had wrought on the land, and that God was looking down on my actions with approval. I was busy myself, and while I missed Goody and took pains to write to her regularly, having charge of a great castle meant that I had no leisure to mourn the postponement of our marriage. After a tolerably hard winter, when spring finally came I had the men out in the fields with the local villeins, helping to sow the seed for the new season’s crops.
The King came and went with a small group of his closest household knights — and on each visit he brought with him a fevered sense of urgency, as if there were never enough hours to accomplish all that he had a mind to do; he did not come as often as I would have liked, for he had much business in Rouen but also found time to journey further south and visit his lands in Maine and Anjou. But whenever he visited, I found my heart lifted by his good cheer and boundless energy.
I saw almost nothing of Mercadier, who was based permanently in the south, except for one brief visit in March, when we observed chilly civilities at dinner and avoided each other as much as possible. William the Marshal and his men came to Chateau-Gaillard twice, and I had a suspicion that he was checking to see that all was well. But if he was overseeing me, he must have been satisfied that I was undertaking my role competently and there was no immediate cause for alarm.
The truce was largely observed all the way through until the early summer of the Year of Our Lord eleven hundred and ninety-eight — but if there was no actual warfare there was no let-up in the political battle. The Marshal told me that the King had persuaded the Count of Boulogne to join his side, which meant that we were even more strengthened in the north; and wily old Geoffrey of the Perche finally came back into the fold, among other barons that held land on Philip’s borders.
But the French King was playing the same diplomatic game: he made an alliance with Philip of Swabia, a German magnate, in which they both swore an oath to aid each other in war against Richard, and, in Aquitaine, he managed by means of a vast bribe to seduce Viscount Aimar of Limoges, Richard’s unruly vassal, to his side.
This news, delivered to me by the Marshal, filled me with concern for Robin who would have passed through the turncoat’s lands. Now that Aimar had revealed himself as an enemy of our King, I was concerned that Robin might be captured and held for ransom. But a week later I received a much travel-stained letter from the Earl of Locksley himself, informing me that he had met Robert de Boron and talked long into the night with him and that he was safely in Montpellier, in the County of Toulouse, Richard’s new southern ally, and staying at Reuben’s sumptuous house in the centre of that ancient and most civilized city.
Robin was careful in his letter not to openly mention the Grail — he called it ‘the bowl’, a reference to our last conversation before his departure from Chateau-Gaillard — but he said that he had learned much about the origins of ‘the bowl’ and had encouraging news about its whereabouts, and also the whereabouts of ‘a masterful old friend of ours from our time in Paris’.
When I read these words, I felt a sudden chill, like a cold draught of air. I had not troubled myself with thoughts of the Master for many months. He had seemed phantom-like; a dream figure beyond the grasp of my waking mind. But Robin’s words kindled something inside me and I found myself clutching the parchment letter and suddenly trembling with a rage too long suppressed. My heart was thumping in my chest; my palms were damp. Thomas was with me at the time, we were going over a list of the castle’s stores together, but when he asked what ailed me, I could not tell him and merely said it must be the beginning of a summer ague.
When I retired to my chamber that night, I allowed my mind at long last to consider the continued existence of the ‘man you cannot refuse’. And I knew one thing for certain, as surely as I knew that Christ was my Saviour. I knew that, foolish indulgence or not, I wanted to have vengeance on the Master. I wanted him dead — for the sake of Hanno, and my poor hanged father Henry; for the kindly priest Jean of Verneuil, for pungent Master Fulk, even for the fat, old, music-mad Cardinal Heribert of Vendome.
I wanted to watch the Master suffer and die.
Chapter Twenty-six
King Richard and his household knights returned to Chateau-Gaillard in August, as the Locksley and Westbury men were helping the local peasants to bring in the wheat harvest, and he came bearing a letter from Goody. After I had greeted the King in a suitable fashion and installed him and his followers in his quarters in the keep, I took the letter to my own lodgings — I had taken over Robin’s chamber in the north tower of the inner bailey — and greedily devoured the precious missive.
While my betrothed was now a full-grown woman of twenty years in the full bloom of her looks, her handwriting, I fear, was still that of a young girl; and her command of Latin was at best rudimentary. But the warmth of the love and the urgency of her ardour that seemed to spill from these parchment pages made these trifling failings recede into insignificance. She missed me — she wrote — she longed to be married and to hold me in her arms; she ached to give herself fully to me and to bear my children. When would I come back to her? Surely I had served the King long enough and the time had come for me to return to her side. She noted the extreme honour that the King did her by offering to give her away, and she fully acknowledged
the wonderful generosity of his dowry, but all of that was less important to her mind than the fact that we must be married — and soon. The letter finished with these words: ‘Come to me, my love, come and take me to our marriage bed. The wretched creature has not been seen nor heard of in these parts for a year or more, and I will not let fear of her malediction ruin our lives and our happiness. I would rather live a single year as your loving wife than a lifetime without you. Come to me, my darling, and make me whole.’
Her letter aroused a chorus of fierce emotions in my heart and, if I am honest, my loins, and I promised myself that I would not let another twelve-month go by without taking my beautiful Goody to wife.
A week later Robin returned to the castle, face burnt by southern suns, his frame lean from hard travel, his demeanour wearily cheerful. He had come most recently, he told me, from Paris where under cover of the truce he had been visiting friends and taking a measure of the French capital for Richard.
‘War is upon us, Alan,’ he said, ‘this truce will not last another month.’ He was wolfing down a plate of cold pork and barley bread in my comfortable chambers in the north tower, which I noted gloomily, I would now have to relinquish to him. ‘Paris is full of armed men, French knights, militiamen, foreign crossbowmen, mercenaries — King Philip has no intention, it is clear, of sticking to the agreement to suspend hostilities until next year. Philip is fully armed and ready for battle; the question is, where will he strike?’
That question was answered within the week. We had news that our staunch ally Baldwin of Flanders had attacked in the north again, and had swept down into Artois and was besieging St Omer. King Richard delivered the news to his senior knights and barons at the daily council — and by the over-pleased tone he used to convey the information, I knew that it was part of a deep plan that he had hatched privately with Baldwin. Their strategy was reasonably simple to divine: Baldwin would come down from Flanders and Philip was then supposed to rush north to confront him, at which point Richard would attack from the west and trap Philip between his army and Baldwin’s and crush it utterly. But, once again, Philip showed that he was no fool — he could smell a trap as well as the next man. When Baldwin came down from the north, Philip ignored his advance, in effect, sacrificing the beautiful town of St Omer to fire and rapine. Instead he sent his mighty army west, towards us, pouring his full strength over the border at Gisors and on into Normandy.
Philip was on our doorstep again.
Uncharacteristically, Richard was taken by surprise by the speed of the French advance. His troops were scattered across the duchy, and when King Philip came roaring into his domain, heading due west directly for Chateau-Gaillard, the Lionheart could do nothing but retreat before him. For ten days we fought a desperate rearguard action, skirmishing hard against the French knights as they burned and pillaged through the lands that my men and I had spent the last year working so hard to repair. Robin had resumed command of the Locksley men, and while I was his senior lieutenant, I now rode out mainly with my ten-strong, red-clad Westbury troop. It was heartbreaking to see the destruction caused by the French as they ravaged the lands between Gisors and Chateau-Gaillard — orchards torched, churches looted, livestock slaughtered and left to rot — but we took our revenge when and where we could.
One warm September morning our troop came across a band of French knights pillaging an isolated farmstead near Suzay. Kit, the scout, came galloping back to the column and told me in breathless terms that there were a half-dozen French knights burning and looting with abandon not far ahead. I gave thanks to God for the gruelling training for war that I had insisted on during the long dull months of the truce. There was no need for detailed instructions: ‘Lances, then side arms,’ I said. ‘Stay together, we will not linger; we go in fast, surprise them, kill as many as we can and get out. If they flee, do not chase them — it could be a trap. Does everybody understand?’
It was no trap: we barrelled into the enemy at the gallop, our lances levelled, and two knights and two mounted men-at-arms died in moments, skewered in the first rushing assault. I took the first knight, a red-faced oaf, directly in his slack belly with my lance, the numbing shock transmitting sharply through my right arm as the steel lance head smashed through his mail links and splintered his spine. I killed a second man after a brief exchange of cuts with Fidelity, a savage backhand chop to the neck. We surprised and outnumbered them, and they died easily. I think they were fuddled with drink, for they all seemed to react rather slowly to our initial screaming charge. One mounted man-at-arms at the back of the group, perhaps more sober than the rest, hauled his horse around and galloped away immediately he saw us, and we let that coward go; another man loosed a crossbow at us, missed and then sought to escape on foot, but Ox-head rode him down within a dozen paces and dropped him with a neat axe blow to the back of the skull. None of our men was harmed. We wasted only a few moments gathering up their plunder and rounding up two of the warhorses — the other mounts having made successful bids for freedom — and leaving the bodies where they lay, we headed off again south-west towards Chateau-Gaillard, our faces aglow at this small victory against the invaders.
The next day we rode out again with the King himself — but not as rag-tag skirmishers, this time with all the armed strength we could muster. With him were Robin, the Marshal and half a dozen other barons, who had all concentrated at Chateau-Gaillard when it became clear that Philip’s main thrust was against us in Normandy, and that the Flemish assault from Baldwin in the north was being ignored. The first thing the King said to us, as we mustered in the dawn in the middle bailey of the castle — fifty grim-faced, fully armoured knights and twice that number of mounted men-at-arms — was: ‘We have held him thus far; now we push him back. Mercadier is coming up fast from the south. It’s time to show Philip our true mettle.’
We rode out of Chateau-Gaillard and formed up immediately in the attack formation, four ranks of horsemen in the vanguard, two of knights, and behind them two ranks of sergeants, including my Westbury lads. Then we set out along the main road east towards Gamaches, firmly resolved to force back Philip’s men all the way to the border or die in the attempt. On each wing were a score or so of lighter horsemen, Locksley men for the most part, whose duties included scouting, but also sweeping the scattered enemy ahead of our main column, and ensuring that none were left behind to harry our flanks and rear. Behind us came a great mass of infantry, a couple of light siege engines and the baggage train. We had not travelled three miles before we came upon a sizeable body of enemy horsemen, perhaps thirty knights and men-at-arms, cantering diagonally across our path on a field of stubble. I was in the front rank, next to Robin, and perhaps four or five places along from the King. Richard, naturally, didn’t hesitate for a moment: ‘There they go! At them,’ he shouted, lowered his lance and urged his horse forward. I clapped my spurs to Shaitan’s sides and the whole front rank of twenty-five knights thundered forward as one man.
I heard the panicked shouts of the enemy knights as they saw us coming and tried to turn their warhorses to face our attack, but their forward horsemen created chaos by stopping abruptly, then turning their beasts, while the ones behind, unaware that they were under attack, barged into the haunches of the horses in front of them. They were in utter confusion even before our galloping line smashed into them. I shouted: ‘Westbury!’ and attempted to sink my lance into the side of a knight who was half-turned away from me and struggling to control his madly kicking horse. I missed and received a hard clout on the back of my helmet from the knight’s axe as I thundered past. My lance speared into the trapper-covered rump of a horse beyond my intended victim, sank deep in the poor animal’s flesh, and was snatched out of my hands. A French knight materialized in front of me and took swing with his long sword, but I received the blow on my shield, turned Shaitan with my knees and fumbled at my waist for Goody’s mace. My enemy turned his horse too and came at me for another pass, his blade lifted high. I ducked his swipe a
nd cracked his upper arm with a short hard blow from the mace as we pounded past each other. He howled and fell back in the saddle, as I circled him again, and I saw that the limb was clearly broken, but before I could finish him my attention was wrenched away: another Frenchman was coming at me from my right side only yards away, jabbing forward with his lance, and shouting: ‘St Denis, St Denis!’ The tip of his spear narrowly missed my belly and passed between the high front of my saddle and my groin. I leaned forward and trapped the ash shaft there, let the mace fall and dangle from the leather strap that attached it to my wrist, seized the lance with my right hand and hauled it from the astounded man’s grasp. The man, his horse now only a foot or so from mine, grasped at the handle of his scabbarded sword. I flipped the lance off my lap and away, grabbed the dangling mace and swung hard and low with the same movement, smashing its heavy ridged metallic head into his kneecap. His agonized scream was only cut short by a rider galloping past me and decapitating him with a single sweep of the sword: I caught a glimpse of Robin’s snarling battle-face under his helmet, just for an instant as he passed. And then it was over.
The French knights who had survived were running for it, and we were laughing, panting and calling out jests to old friends: the King seemed to be illuminated with animal vigour and energy, at least that is how I remember it. He truly seemed to be lit by an inner fire, like a fine beeswax candle in a horn lantern, that made his white teeth shine, his bright blue eyes sparkle and his red-gold hair glow like sunshine.
We rested for a quarter of an hour, checked our horses for wounds — Shaitan was unharmed, thank the Lord, and he seemed to be vastly enjoying the excitement of the day. We shared flasks of wine or water, mopped our brows and mounted up again. The second rank of knights now took the lead and we pressed onwards.
